Manabi Bandyopadhyay Biography 
Manabi Bandyopadhyay is the professor by profession, academician and first transgender person in India to complete PhD. She currently serves as the principal of Krishnagar Women's College since 7 June 2015. She has been the associate professor in Bengali at Vivekananda Satobarshiki Mahavidyalaya, prior to joining as the principal of Krishnagar Women's College. She is India's first openly transgender college principal, yet another credit owned by her. Manabi is attached to spiritual world, and is a great devotee of Sarada Devi. Manabi Bandopadhyay underwent a sex-change operation in 2003.
Manabi Bandyopadhyay was born as Somnath Bandapadhya in West Bengal. She was born as the youngest son into a middle-class family in Naihati of North 24 Parganas district. Since young her mind was filled with some unsolved puzzles and questions. She used to ask herself, what’s wrong with ‘him’, and what makes ‘him’ cry like a woman. It took decades for a professor at college to gather courage to construct a body that her spirit agreed with. She was serving as a professor of Bengali literature at a college in Jhargram, West Bengal. She worked in that college for 8 years, prior to her sex change.
Bandopadhyay underwent a sex-change operation in 2003. She needed surgeries and prolonged hormone treatment for that to happen. But the end result was what she dreamt about. After sex change, she had to make changes in many of the common things, such as using ladies’ washrooms, travel in women’s compartments of local trains to work etc. In 2015, when she took charge as the principal of Krishnagar Women's College, it was a path breaking move. India, probably the world got its first transgender college principal.
Published: July 28, 2018
Updated: July 28, 2018
